Amid international uproar about sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy, Southwestern Ontario’s bishop is vowing reform and renewed action in a new diocese-wide statement to parishioners.

Bishop Ronald Fabbro addresses the clergy sex-abuse scandal in Pennsylvania that has sent shock waves through the church and draws on his own experience meeting victims of sex abuse by clergy in his “Letter to the Faithful.”

The letter was released to the news media on Friday.

“The clergy abuse crisis has brought to light the brokenness in our church,” Fabbro says in the letter. “For these wounds to heal, we must first acknowledge our brokenness before the Lord . . . And we – bishops, priests and lay people – must be courageous in carrying out the reforms needed in our church.”

The statement will be delivered as a homily at every mass in the diocese – which includes more than 440,000 churchgoers from Windsor to Huron County – on Sunday.

Copies of Fabbro’s letter will also be available at the more than 130 parishes in the region.

Across this district, at least 18 priests have been charged, convicted or sued for sexual abuse, including Charles Sylvestre, who was convicted in 2006 of 47 counts of indecent assault spanning four decades.

“Since I have been bishop, I have met with survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their families,” Fabbro says in the letter. “It was heart-wrenching to listen to their stories of the pain and the sufferings they have endured throughout their entire lives – sometimes for 30, 40 or 50 years after the abuse occurred.”

Fabbro’s sweeping statement also addresses the bombshell Pennsylvania grand jury report released in July that uncovered credible sexual abuse allegations against more than 300 priests in the state dating back to 1947.

More than 500,000 pages of internal church documents were subpoenaed by Pennsylvania’s attorney general as part of the two-year investigation. The report identified more than 1,000 children, but the actual number could be in the thousands, the grand jury believes.

Rev. John Comiskey of the Diocese of London said it’s important for the organization to speak out now, especially with the renewed international focus on sex abuse by clergy. The Pennsylvania dossier is indefensible, Comiskey said, and it’s incumbent on Catholics everywhere to reflect on and denounce the behaviour.

“Our position is one that what’s happened there is inexcusable, especially the way bishops have covered things up or failed to deal with them,” he said. “We should all be responsible for protecting vulnerable people.”

He said it’s also important to remind parishioners and the public that righting past wrong and healing decades-old injustices is a work in progress, one that requires constant vigilance and work.

“We need to maintain a safe environment,” Comiskey said. “A crisis comes and goes, but vigilance is something that must be maintained forever in the future.”

Of the grand jury findings, Fabbro’s statement says, “It is devastating to read the accounts of profound evil that occurred in our church. The grand jury report details the failures of the bishops who covered up the abuse by moving priests around. The coverup was terribly wrong. Catholics are rightly outraged that the bishops failed to put a stop to the abuse.”

The statement’s delivery will coincide with the day of Our Lady of Sorrows, an annual observance marked by Catholics worldwide Sept. 15, and the diocese’s annual mass for survivors of clergy sexual abuse.